Critical Survey: Magnite (NASDAQ:MGNI) and Viant Technology (NASDAQ:DSP)

Viant Technology (NASDAQ:DSP) and Magnite (NASDAQ:MGNI) are both small-cap business services companies, but which is the better investment? We will contrast the two companies based on the strength of their institutional ownership, valuation, analyst recommendations, profitability, earnings, dividends and risk.

Insider & Institutional Ownership

11.8% of Viant Technology shares are held by institutional investors. Comparatively, 73.4% of Magnite shares are held by institutional investors. 26.5% of Viant Technology shares are held by insiders. Comparatively, 4.3% of Magnite shares are held by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that large money managers, endowments and hedge funds believe a company is poised for long-term growth.

Volatility and Risk

Viant Technology has a beta of 0.27, meaning that its stock price is 73% less volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Magnite has a beta of 2.19, meaning that its stock price is 119% more volatile than the S&P 500.

Profitability

This table compares Viant Technology and Magnite’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Viant Technology	-4.38%	-3.35%	-2.45%
Magnite	-38.65%	2.07%	0.61%

Analyst Recommendations

This is a summary of current ratings for Viant Technology and Magnite, as reported by MarketBeat.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Viant Technology	0	4	2	0	2.33
Magnite	0	2	8	0	2.80

Viant Technology currently has a consensus price target of $6.58, suggesting a potential upside of 19.48%. Magnite has a consensus price target of $14.75, suggesting a potential upside of 90.57%. Given Magnite’s stronger consensus rating and higher probable upside, analysts clearly believe Magnite is more favorable than Viant Technology.

Earnings and Valuation

This table compares Viant Technology and Magnite’s revenue, earnings per share and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Viant Technology	$197.17 million	1.74	-$11.91 million	($0.61)	-9.03
Magnite	$577.07 million	1.84	-$130.32 million	($1.72)	-4.50

Viant Technology has higher earnings, but lower revenue than Magnite. Viant Technology is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than Magnite, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.

Summary

Magnite beats Viant Technology on 10 of the 14 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Viant Technology

Viant Technology Inc. operates as an advertising technology company. It provides Adelphic, a cloud-based demand side platform (DSP) that enables marketers and their advertising agencies to plan, buy, and measure advertising across channels, including desktop, mobile, connected and linear TV, in-game, streaming audio, and digital billboards. The company also offers Holistic, an omnichannel DSP for marketers and their agencies to manage omnichannel campaigns and access metrics from each channel to inform decisions in other channels; Viant Household ID, a household profile that provides customer data insights and optimized bid decisions for target audiences, accurate reach, and frequency management across omnichannel supply; World Without Cookies software to manage reach and frequency at the household level; and Viant Identity Graph, which reduces or eliminates the need for cookies by enabling matching of people-based identifiers that anchor digital identifiers that allows marketers to reach targeted consumers in a privacy-conscious manner. In addition, it provides campaign analysis and data intelligence tool that empowers customers with differentiated insights, including conversion lift, multi-touch attribution, foot-traffic data reports, digital-out-of-home lift, sales reporting, and ROAS analytics; onboarding data integrations provides marketers with high match rates to audience insights for segmentation, targeting, and measuring outcomes; and self-service interface that provides customers with transparency and control over their advertising campaigns and underlying data infrastructure. The company sells its platform through a direct sales team focused on business development in various markets. It serves purchasers of programmatic advertising inventory; and large, independent, and mid-market advertising agencies. The company was founded in 1999 and is headquartered in Irvine, California.

About Magnite

Magnite, Inc. operates an independent sell-side advertising platform in the United States and internationally. The company's platform offers applications and services for sellers of digital advertising inventory or publishers that own and operate CTV channels, applications, websites, and other digital media properties, to manage and monetize their inventory; and provides applications and services for buyers, including advertisers, agencies, agency trading desks, and demand side platforms to buy digital advertising inventory. It markets its technology solutions to buyers and sellers through a sales teams that operate from various locations. The company was formerly known as The Rubicon Project, Inc. and changed name to Magnite, Inc. in July 2020. Magnite, Inc. was incorporated in 2007 and is headquartered in New York, New York.